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OPINION

Opinion: France, take your statue back

The ocean liner heading for America was jam-packed with passengers fleeing certain death. Their survival depended upon getting a welcome mat and not a cold shoulder. But public opinion was against receiving them, motivated by economic fears, xenophobia and concern that they were spies, terrorists or communists. The 937 German Jews fleeing Nazi Germany on the St. Louis could almost taste freedom. They could see the lights of downtown Miami from the shoreline. But on that fateful day in May 1939, America would not be the answer to their prayers. The Great Depression had left millions unemployed and people were fearful of competing with “foreigners” for scarce jobs. That fear fueled anti-Semitism, nativism, and isolationism. The St. Louis was forced to sail back to war-torn Europe where 254 of its passengers perished in the Holocaust.

As a nation, we have always had an ambiguous relationship to immigration. We’ve all fled here from somewhere else, but for the native peoples, yet throughout our history we’ve hesitated to extend the same freedom to others. In the mid-1800s, more than 3 million people came to American shores, the largest emigration in U.S. history, fleeing famine, political and religious persecution and war. Rather than welcoming them, there was a great backlash. An anti-immigrant “Know-Nothing” movement sprung up, empowered by popular fears that the country was being overwhelmed by German and Irish Catholic immigrants, whom they saw as hostile to American values. The know-nothings sought to “purify” America. Unspoken was that it was former immigrants who were doing the purifying.

In Leviticus, a goat is cast out into the wilderness to carry away the sins of the community. From this early biblical parable of the “escape goat” evolved the “scapegoat”, one who is blamed for the sins of others. History recounts numerous examples where a blameless people become the fall guys, allaying our fears as we banish them from our midst, cleansing us all. The current anti-immigration furor in America, at least in part, is based on the belief that if we build walls and close borders, we’ll protect ourselves from Islamic terrorism, from job-stealing Mexicans, and from murderers.

Yet reality belies this hysteria. Our nation’s technology industry, agriculture and many other fields depend upon the free flow of refugee workers. But beyond the economics, many terrorism experts believe that the more we isolate ourselves from the world, the more the hysterical pronouncements by terrorist groups are reinforced that the U.S. is at war with them. Rather than making us safer, this increases the possibility of future terrorist threats.

Pastor Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller was a German theologian and Lutheran pastor who supported Hitler’s rise to power until he saw the terrible consequences of Nazism on his countrymen and the world. He’s best known for his statement: “First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist . . . then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew, then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.” For his anti-Nazi stance, he was sent to Dachau concentration camp where he narrowly escaped execution.

Today, Pastor Niemöller might very well have said: “Today they come for the Muslims and the Mexicans; tomorrow for us all.” Hate begets hate and history abounds with examples where democratic nations allowed hate to turn themselves into dictatorships.

When Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi designed “The Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World,” he depicted Lady Liberty striding forward, broken shackles at her feet, bringing the light of liberty to the globe. Lady Liberty holds no stop sign, but rather a beacon guiding the path to freedom. It’s up to Americans to decide where the balance lies between safety and liberty.

Our founders struggled with this issue in their day as well. Benjamin Franklin said: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” If we bend the twig too much toward paranoia and fear, we isolate ourselves from the world community. If we open our doors so wide that it threatens our safety, than we compromise our security. Prudence dictates that wherever that balance lies, we find a path that doesn’t compromise our values.

When I ponder immigration today, I think about my grandparents’ brave exodus to America, leaving everything behind to escape Hitler’s bloody grasp. If not for the sentiments expressed by Bartholdi’s guiding light, where would I be? Where would any of us be? Were we to reach across time and talk to our ancestors, what wisdom would they impart had they known our plan, to slam shut ‘the golden door’ and throw away the key?

David Weintraub is a writer, filmmaker and environmental troublemaker who runs the Center for Cultural Preservation in Hendersonville. He can be reached at www.saveculture.org